Richard Langly
Richard "Ringo" Langly was one of the three Lone Gunmen (the others being John Fitzgerald Byers and Melvin Frohike). Unlike the other two Lone Gunmen, he had long, blond hair and often wore t-shirts that featured his favorite punk and rock music heroes. (TXF: "E.B.E.", et al.) Langly died with his two closest associates in 2002, sacrificing his own life in order to protect the world from a bio-terrorist. (TXF: "Jump the Shark") Before the Lone Gunmen , after having fallen in some mud.]] television.]] Richard Langly was born in 1968 or thereabouts. (TLG: "The Cap'n Toby Show") He grew up on a farm in Saltville, in land-locked Nebraska. (TLG: "Like Water for Octane", "The Cap'n Toby Show") His father, a farmer, also lived there. (TLG: "Like Water for Octane") In March 1978, when Langly was around ten years old, he stumbled outside while carrying a tub of chicken feed and landed face-first in some mud, where nearby chickens surrounded his fallen body. When he was about the same age, Langly enjoyed watching his family's old Zenith television, every afternoon after his school and the many chores he had to do. Using the television to escape the realities of his humdrum farm lifestyle, Langly watched all three channels that were available, including characters such as Bozo the Clown, Captain Kangaroo as well as Shari Lewis and Lamb Chop. Langly thought Captain Kangaroo was "cool" and felt like the characters were good friends who were always looking out for him, who would help him grow up strong and true, and would never make fun of his hair. He found these old shows to be comforting and discovered that they made him feel good about the world he was growing up in. His favorite of these shows, and the one that made him feel best, was The New Cap'n Toby Show. The series' title character, Cap'n Toby, made Langly's childhood bearable and was someone Langly felt he could both trust and count on, growing up. Langly would later comment that watching these shows constituted his one, single best memory of childhood as well as his one perfect image that summed up everything that was wonderful about being a youngster. He also theorized that the reason he had loved The New Cap'n Toby Show so much was because he had grown up in land-locked Nebraska or simply because Cap'n Toby had been so decent and true blue that Langly would have been willing to give anything to ship off with him. (TLG: "The Cap'n Toby Show") ]] In 1982, Langly was typing on a computer in one corner of a cow barn when his father approached from behind him. He explained to his father, who was angry that he was disobeying instructions by using the computer instead of milking cows within the barn, that the machine, referred to by his father as a "damn-fool toy", was the future and would change everything, from the way people did business to their method of communication. He also imagined that, by the year 2000, he would have made millions of dollars due to the computer, people would all eat food pills, like on Star Trek, and would no longer need cows. (TLG: "Like Water for Octane") By May 1989, Langly had his own bootleg cable company, Langly Vision. He once sold a converter that shorted out and burned the buyer's house down. Once in 1989, he hacked into the Maryland DMV and changed his endorsement so he could handicap park. He would claim, one week later, that the reason he had done this was because he had tinnitus. (TXF: "Unusual Suspects") Important Encounters '' player Richard Langly in 1989.]] The week after he had hacked into the Maryland DMV, Langly manned a stall for his company at the Computer and Electronics Show at the Baltimore Convention Center in Baltimore, Maryland. He encountered both Frohike and Byers at the show but his reactions to both were initially negative, attempting to persuade an attractive female customer to purchase his own technology rather than that of Frohike - his sales competitor who had a stall next to his - and repeatedly referring to Byers as a "narc", as Langly was aware that Byers was a government employee at this time. Later at the same show, Langly played Dungeons and Dragons under the name "Lord Manhammer" but was disappointed when the other players ignored his proposal for them to play for fifty dollars, until a player nicknamed "Elron the Druid" finally accepted the challenge. Langly demonstrated a familiarity with the game's terminology but, just before he was about to play, the game was interrupted by the arrival of Byers and Frohike. Langly reluctantly accepted their offer to partake in "the coolest hack in the the world" and helped them hack into an FBI mainframe, using technology that he professed to have invented, himself, and boasting about the easiness of the task. With instructions from the other two men, he accessed a detailed file pertaining to highly commended FBI Agent Fox Mulder and another file about Susanne Modeski, the attractive woman who he had earlier spoken to. He was shocked to read several serious allegations concerning the woman but - after she arrived in the room, moments later, as Langly cowered behind Byers and Frohike - Modeski assured the men that she was not guilty of these deeds but had been framed by an unscrupulous government whom she had unwittingly helped by developing a mind-altering ergotamine-histomine gas, a drug whose name Langly started to repeat in bewilderment before she interrupted him. After she asked the men who they thought was responsible for putting Bibles in hotel rooms, Langly replied by skeptically asking whether her answer was the government and, as Frohike later refuted her allegations at length, Langly exemplified the government's moral uprightness by citing both the Susan B. Anthony dollar as well as the fact that Byers worked for the same government. However, the threesome soon discovered, due in large part to more hacking conducted by Langly, that Modeski's claims were mostly true. The men also learned that a test of the drug Modeski had developed was imminent. After the foursome broke into a warehouse, Langly was the first to locate a box that contained the drug there. As Agent Mulder then confronted the group and attempted to arrest Modeski, Langly agreed with his male accomplices stating that she was innocent but he was the first of the men to follow Mulder's subsequent instructions for them to lie down on the ground. Two unidentified men then arrived, insisting that Modeski accompany them, and opened fire on Mulder, releasing the mind-alerting drug with their bullets, before being shot themselves, by Modeski. After she fled the area, Langly was alarmed to see Mulder's bare body writhe on the ground, as the FBI agent had been affected by the drug. Langly was extremely eager, while the warehouse was sanitized by another unidentified group, for Byers to stop questioning the group's mysterious male leader who, moments before following his group out of the warehouse, told the threesome, regarding the Kennedy assassination, "I heard it was a lone gunman". Langly and his two associates, as well as a clearly delusional Agent Mulder, were almost immediately discovered by an armed SWAT team and he, echoing Byers, pleaded them not to shoot. After the threesome were arrested by the SWAT team and were taken to Baltimore Police Department's Homicide Unit, Langly remarked in resigned frustration that he and his accomplices were nevertheless "screwed". When he awoke on the next morning, he voiced his disappointment that his current situation had not all been a bad dream, complaining that he was actually in hell. He blamed Modeski for having consecutively involved and abandoned the threesome. confiscates Langly's technology.]] Moments later, the prisoners were released and Langly's belongings were handed back to him by an Officer who declared that Langly had thirty-eight dollars in his wallet. Just as the Officer was about to hand Langly his strange technological invention without the Officer having a clue about the device's nature, the Detective who had released the threesome confiscated Langly's equipment. Langly then helped his associates locate Modeski by recalling that she had told them she wanted to go public. The threesome raced to meet her outside the offices of the Baltimore Guardian where, after she told the threesome that the newspaper company had not believed her and thanked the trio for their help, Langly indirectly acknowledged the noise of a ringing telephone near them, in askance of the other two men, and watched as Modeski, having passionately told the trio to spread the truth that she had made them aware of, was forced into a car by several men who took her away, including the mysterious leader of the group that had sanitized the warehouse. Langly returned, with his two new friends, to the Baltimore Convention Center, where they were met by Agent Mulder and, while Byers began to tell Mulder the truth about the government, Langly urged Byers to tell the FBI agent about hotel room Bibles. (TXF: "Unusual Suspects") Later the same year, Langly started The Lone Gunman newspaper with Byers and Frohike, naming their publication after the Kennedy assassination. (TLG: "Pilot", "All About Yves") :Even though it is hinted at in "Unusual Suspects" that the ''The Lone Gunman newspaper was named after the Kennedy assassination, Langly alone directly confirms this likelihood in "All About Yves".'' Helping Mulder & Scully in the 1990s 1994 When Mulder visited the Lone Gunmen in 1994, Langly claimed to have had breakfast with the man who shot JFK, adding that the shooter was now an "old dude" and had said he had been "dressed as a cop on the grassy knoll". It was also at this meeting that Langly first met Mulder's skeptical partner, Special Agent Dana Scully, who had arrived with Mulder. Langly took a phone call, answering with the introduction "Lone Gunman", while the others talked and Byers started to show Scully an anti-counterfeiting strip on the inside of a twenty dollar bill. After finishing the call, Langly wondered aloud why the strip was on the inside, mentioning that other countries put the same strip on the outside, and, in response to Mulder then asking the publishing partners what they knew about Gulf War Syndrome, Langly referred to the condition as "Agent Orange of the 90s." He and Byers ridiculed Mulder's subsequent suggestion that UFOs had caused the condition. After the FBI agents left, Langly later answered a call from Mulder, again answering with the greeting, "Lone Gunman." He seemed excited and surprised when Mulder mentioned the possibility of Langly and his colleagues obtaining the first substantiated photograph of an Extraterrestrial Biological Entity, a being that Langly referred to as an "E.B.E.", and eagerly asked what they had to do to acquire the image, to which Mulder replied by asking them to simply hack him some identification numbers. Langly warned Mulder that he had been able to access Level 6 of the Hanford Power Plant before the agents successfully used their identification numbers to enter the facility. (TXF: "E.B.E.") In the same year, Mulder came to the Gunmen concerning a fly dropped in Franklin, Pennsylvania. On examination of the fly, Langly put forth the theory that the fly was irradiated to control propagation. It was shown that the fly was irradiated and his theory became the most plausible. Later, Mulder asked about LSDM and so both Byers and Langly explaned it as an experimental insecticide that acts as a phermone, triggering fear. They also told Mulder about D.D.T.. D.D.T. was a chemical, determined to be safe by the government, but then shown to cause sprayed women to have higher rates of breast cancer. He remarked that LSDM and D.D.T. operations were "different chemicals, same stunt".(TXF:"Blood") 1995 1996 1997 Langly and Frohike helped Mulder break into the Lombard Research Facility while seeking a way to help with Scully's cancer. (TXF: "Memento Mori") 1998 & Early 1999 The Las Vegas Incident Further Investigations 2000 2001 After The Lone Gunman Relationships Family Father Colleagues Melvin Frohike John Fitzgerald Byers Jimmy Bond Contacts Fox Mulder Dana Scully Enemies Yves Adele Harlow Morris Fletcher Imaginary Versions Background Information The only description of Langly provided in the script of TXF: "E.B.E.", in which he first appears with the other Lone Gunmen, states, "thick lenses in black framed eyeglasses - he wears a Ramones T-shirt". An early version of the script for TXF: "Unusual Suspects" gives Langly's name as "Ringo", but this fact did not make it into the final episode and that name was never used in any subsequent episode of The X-Files. His full name was first revealed in the opening credits from The Lone Gunmen series, in which his name is given as "Richard 'Ringo' Langly". In that series, Langly is the only main character whose name does not appear in an episode title; the surnames of the other two Lone Gunmen appear in "Eine Kleine Frohike" and "Maximum Byers" while the names used by their associates, Jimmy Bond and Yves Adele Harlow, are referenced in the titles "Bond, Jimmy Bond", "Diagnosis: Jimmy" and "All About Yves". Appearances *TLG *TXF: **"E.B.E." (Season 1) **"Blood" (Season 2) **"One Breath" **"Anasazi" **"The Blessing Way" (Season 3) **"Paper Clip" **"Nisei" **"Apocrypha" **"Wetwired" **"Musings of a Cigarette Smoking Man" (Season 4) **"Memento Mori" **"Small Potatoes" **"Redux" (Season 5) **"Redux II" **"Unusual Suspects" **"Emily" **"Kill Switch" **"The End" *The X-Files Movie **"Triangle" (Season 6) **"Dreamland II" **"One Son" **"Three of a Kind" **"Field Trip" **"First Person Shooter" (Season 7) **"En Ami" **"Requiem" **"Within" (Season 8) **"Via Negativa" **"The Gift" **"DeadAlive" **"Three Words" **"Existence" **"Nothing Important Happened Today" (Season 9) **"Nothing Important Happened Today II" **"Provenance" **"Providence" **"Jump the Shark" **"The Truth" Langly, Richard Langly, Richard Langly, Richard